Venice

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It’s growing on me. I went out early to get milk and felt the vibe of the locals (and again after dark when the day tourists left), Venice starts to feel a bit more alive instead of just being busy. We went to the markets and bought heaps of fresh fruit, fruit salad for lunch, to counteract the pizza & pasta. You won’t believe the tasty fruit & veg we’ve got all through France and Italy, much tastier than anything even from home even from the farmers market.
There’s not much to do except shop so we wandered the streets marveling at the exquisite ‘carnival masks’. I was always led to believe that Venice would be expensive but we bought the kids some beautiful hand made masks. And the wine! A couple of shops had wine in demijohns where you take in an empty bottle and buy it by the litre, 2 euros a litre ($3.30), Darren ran home and grabbed our empty wine bottles (then the water bottles and anything else he could possibly store wine in). And it’s quite nice. So apart from transport to the island we have come well under budget in Venice. Sadly the other thing that was hard to get over was the smell! Unfortunately a cat pooped in our alley and it seems (to me) that the whole town smells like cat poop. One thing in it’s favor, the sun was out and even though it was only in the low 20’s it was pleasantly warm with warm evenings (it would be unbearable in the heat though).

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Photos

Bookshop with character
this secondhand bookshop had a gondoler filled with books, views of the canal from the back door and a basket full of kittens.

The gondolers were so ornate,
I was looking for a plain old cheap one.